Paul Ryan: You know compassion is about more than just spending

posted at 10:41 am on May 8, 2012 by Morgen Richmond

What do you do when your liberal opponents run ads portraying you as literally pushing grandma over a cliff? You go on offense, that’s what you do. From the House Budget Committee yesterday:

Wait, what? Did Ryan just say that under his plan Medicaid spending will increase by 123% over the next decade compared to a 125% increase under current law? How can this possibly be when everywhere you look some Democrat or another is accusing Ryan of trying to radically cut government spending, leaving millions of Americans to fend for themselves like some sort of Social Darwinism experiment. A 2% reduction on a baseline increase which will more than double spending over the next 10 years doesn’t sound very radical to me.

Ryan’s real sin of course is proposing to shift control of Medicaid funding to the states who already administer the program. This would put a serious crimp in the long term liberal strategy to consolidate all healthcare spending under a federally-run, single payer system. Most if not all Democrats would oppose Ryan’s plan even if he were proposing a 150% increase in spending.

At a broader level, Ryan really makes a great point here. Conservatives should refuse to cede the compassion argument to the left. There is more to caring than pumping an ever-increasing share of taxpayer dollars into programs that do virtually nothing to lift people out of poverty. And there is certainly nothing compassionate about standing idly on the sidelines while these programs bankrupt the federal government. Democrats have no viable option to fully fund the major entitlement programs as they exist today without resorting to massive tax increases on the middle class. But they don’t like to talk about this. As Treasury Secretary Geithner said, they don’t have a plan of their own, they just know they don’t like Ryan’s. We’ll see what more of the American people think about Ryan’s plan in the coming months.

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Man, between Governor Walker and Paul Ryan, I’m starting to like that state more and more. When Walker’s finished being governor, Wisconsinites could sure do worse than to elect Ryan as their next governor.

under his plan Medicaid spending will increase by 123% over the next decade compared to a 125% increase under current law

Go Ryan! Another example, perhaps the best example, of how even the so-called deficit hawks in the GOP, are really selling unsustainable socialism like everybody else. Once you get socialism introduced, it’s a done deal. The rest is just kabuki theater.

Libs need to look up the definition of “compassion”, I don’t think it means what they think it means…….and after they do that, apply it to the recent episode with Mr Chen and the American Embassy. That was a REAL situation, not the make believe push grandma off the cliff crap.

under his plan Medicaid spending will increase by 123% over the next decade compared to a 125% increase under current law

Go Ryan! Another example, perhaps the best example, of how even the so-called deficit hawks in the GOP, are really selling unsustainable socialism like everybody else. Once you get socialism introduced, it’s a done deal. The rest is just kabuki theater.

keep the change on May 8, 2012 at 10:49 AM

I really, really hate to agree with you because it’s just sooooo cynical but I can’t help myself. This is why holding out for a “real conservative” in the presidency is pointless. There will never be a real conservative president. Maybe in the past, but that’s not today or the future I expect. If one ever did “sneak in” (and that’s how it would have to happen) that person would be impeached or run out of town in disgrace and the vast majority of Amiericans would be holding pitchforks and torches for this poor ideologue.

under his plan Medicaid spending will increase by 123% over the next decade compared to a 125% increase under current law

Go Ryan! Another example, perhaps the best example, of how even the so-called deficit hawks in the GOP, are really selling unsustainable socialism like everybody else. Once you get socialism introduced, it’s a done deal. The rest is just kabuki theater.

keep the change on May 8, 2012 at 10:49 AM

We won’t be rid of the New Deal and Great Society until bankruptcy and collapse FORCE us to get rid of it.

I’d just like conservatives to pose a simple question to libs regarding spending: Is bankrupting the country compassionate? Why they’re never forced to answer that is beyond me.

Doughboy on May 8, 2012 at 10:44 AM

Exactly.
What are people who really depend on a safety net supposed to do when there is NO MONEY left and the government can’t even borrow any more? (As opposed to lazy, able-bodied Democrat voters who think Obama has an infinite stash of money to buy their vote)

I know. I’m in love with him too. And when the polls show Obama is winning or Allah says, “Dude, I’m nervous.” I head on over to the “Hey Girl, its Paul Ryan” tumblr and then I have hope again. Smart, articulate and good looking. *sigh* He would make a good VP, no?

The Catholic Church calls them the Corporal Works of Mercy because the individual is supposed to do acts that are helpful to those in need. Compassion is the progressive’s belief that he himself need do no more than help the govt take someone else’s wealth to do “good”. The statistics show that conservatives are clearly more merciful than liberal/progressives.

I’m a big Ryan fan, and that short clip is a good reason why. He knows his stuff, and he’s able to make his point concisely and persuasively. I suspect it won’t happen, but a Romney/Ryan ticket would be great…imagine him debating Slow Joe, or out on the stump talking to indies. They’re going to say the GOP ticket is all about killing Grandma and what not, may as well take that head-on with one of the few pols in Washington willing to take on our fiscal challenges. It would also, of course, keep Romney to the Right (for those concerned about that).

Paul Ryan often says what I want to hear but his budget doesn’t cut spending, it just shifts it from Democrat cronies to Republican cronies. Overall it only slightly reduces the rate at which spending increases, so slight that even if his budget was actually passed and signed into law, the rate of increase in spending would still probably continue to grow, just like always.

That’s because while Paul Ryan may be a big talker, he always votes to increase the debt ceiling. He supports the inflationary monetary policy, which is a hidden tax—so that while he may say he “opposes increasing taxes”, that is only in public: under the table, he supports taxation through inflation, which is how the government continues to grow even though there is a false appearance that Congress is deadlocked. They’re really not, both parties support taxation through inflation so they can buy their own deficit spending and so on and so forth, the only difference between the parties being their rhetoric, which is just for show.

In spite of his tough free market bluff, Paul Ryan voted to bail out the corrupt crony-banks that, along with our crony-government, are responsible for the chicanery behind the bubble of debt, that was a very lucrative endeavor of theirs that nobody has even gone to jail for! Why isn’t Paul Ryan demanding that the culprits responsible be prosecuted and sent to prison?

It’s because Paul Ryan is part of the establishment, and it’s the crony-establishment that, regardless of what they “say”, are the problem. They know that if one of them figurative hangs, they all will.

Fifth straight day the Dow has been on the downside, and all the liberal media can do is blame Europe! Sound familiar Mr. Obama?

Rovin on May 8, 2012 at 11:05 AM

In this case they are actually correct. The socialist win in France makes the collapse of the Euro not only inevitable but IMMINENT. Without France, the only other semi-solvent country in the Euro backing Germany on forcing “austerity”, Germany itself will have no choice but to either leave the Euro themselves or bankrupt themselves so that the Greeces, the Portugals and the Spains can have an extra few months of “free” government cheese.

The Euro and the EU were doomed from the start. What this does is ensure the collapse happens this year instead of next. It also foreshadows our eventual fate: the parasite class will vote themselves a government that will keep the cheese flowing, even if it means IMMEDIATE collapse of the whole system.

Why the GOP cedes the compassion angle to the left is beyond me. It is easy to give money to other people when it is OPM in the form of government dollars. But a look at our President’s tax return versus that of Mr. Romney shows where the REAL compassion is. What percentage of incomes were donated to charities? Oh yeah, that story got buried. As I recall, a similar story could be told in 2004.

Go Ryan! Another example, perhaps the best example, of how even the so-called deficit hawks in the GOP, are really selling unsustainable socialism like everybody else. Once you get socialism introduced, it’s a done deal. The rest is just kabuki theater.

It’s because Paul Ryan is part of the establishment, and it’s the crony-establishment that, regardless of what they “say”, are the problem. They know that if one of them figurative hangs, they all will.

The Euro and the EU were doomed from the start. What this does is ensure the collapse happens this year instead of next. It also foreshadows our eventual fate: the parasite class will vote themselves a government that will keep the cheese flowing, even if it means IMMEDIATE collapse of the whole system.

wildcat72 on May 8, 2012 at 11:15 AM

Yes, but is this not exactly what Obama’s been doing essentially to this economy for the past three years—PASSING OUT FREE CHEESE????

That’s because while Paul Ryan may be a big talker, he always votes to increase the debt ceiling. He supports the inflationary monetary policy, which is a hidden tax—so that while he may say he “opposes increasing taxes”, that is only in public: under the table, he supports taxation through inflation, which is how the government continues to grow even though there is a false appearance that Congress is deadlocked.

Exactly. Ryan’s a fraud, as are most all Republicans. He voted for the prescription drug benefit as well. How can he claim fiscal responsibility when voting for a big increase in expenditures, financed, as you related, through inflation. There’s an answer to the leftists and Democrats, but it’s not to be found in the Republican party.

Redistributing the wealth of Americans that haven’t even been born yet to enemy nations overseas, which they build, paid for by unrepresented future Americans through debt, and wrung out of present day Americans through inflation taxation.

People have compassion — flesh and blood people, church-body people, even corporate “people”. But, government is not a people!

Government does not have a heart, was never intended to have one. Government is a machine, a management mechanism, a tool. It is a tool designed to protect and retain rights; to hold emotions and passions in check, especially those of greed, power, and tyranny. It has no compassion.

Government is just too large and unwieldy to meet the needs of individuals. That should be left to people of all kinds.

I though the Republican Party was supposed to be the party of individualism, personal responsibility and accountability. Not anymore, now corruption is popular, people watch it on TV for entertainment.

Ryan’s real sin of course is proposing to shift control of Medicaid funding to the states who already administer the program. This would put a serious crimp in the long term liberal strategy to consolidate all healthcare spending under a federally-run, single payer system. Most if not all Democrats would oppose Ryan’s plan even if he were proposing a 150% increase in spending.

It might be an interesting political experiment, and one that could show the Democrats for who they are, if Ryan would propose a 200% increase in Medicare funding paid for by a surtax on the wealthiest 1% of income earners in the country on the condition that control of the program be returned to the states. Then let’s see the Democrats argue that what they’re really concerned about is grandma eating Alpo and not just keeping their centrally planned bureaucracy.

He voted for the prescription drug benefit as well….rickv404 on May 8, 2012 at 11:28 AM

The senior prescription drug benefit program was one of the Democrat’s biggest new entitlements (on their wish list eve before “affordable health care”) long before Karl Rove talked Bush into passing this legislation to take a major “winning plateform away from the Dems. While it had strong support from Seniors on both sides of the political spectrum, the big meme is that the program was unfunded. The real story is this WAS supposed to be a “Democrat shining moment” and/yet they had no plan to pay for it either. Paul Ryan was not the only Republican or Democrat that voted for this program.

I’d just like conservatives to pose a simple question to libs regarding spending: Is bankrupting the country compassionate? Why they’re never forced to answer that is beyond me.

Doughboy on May 8, 2012 at 10:44 AM

They won’t pose that question because when “conservatives” are in power they don’t cut spending either, in fact they’ve increased it. They just have a different group of cronies they spend it on. And while Republicans pretend they’re fiscal conservatives when they’re out of power, in order to regain power, it is an obvious ruse because they support, and always have, the monetary policy that allows the government to continue to spend even if there’s no more other-peoples-money.

I like what Ryan has to say about the budget. I like that he has demonstrated commitment to changing the budget. His actual proposals are very weak tea and he’s not really very conservative. He seems like a perfect mini-Mitt without the inconvenient flip-flopping past. fwiw.

Indeed. Half this country doesn’t pay federal income taxes (and a good portion of them actually get money BACK from the UNearned Income Credit), and then they want to steal more of our money so that they can be “generous” and “compassionate” with OUR money, giving large amounts of it to leftist organizations like ACORN that actively perpetuate fraud and work to defeat conservatives. The whole thing is just disgusting!

O/T Today is primary day in the Scott Walker re-call election. We need to vote ‘cuz after all the faux outrage over the republican “place holder” candidates, the democrats have a candidate that is a frequent protestor at the WI capitol building running against Scott Walker.

Man, between Governor Walker and Paul Ryan, I’m starting to like that state more and more. When Walker’s finished being governor, Wisconsinites could sure do worse than to elect Ryan as their next governor.

Mohonri on May 8, 2012 at 10:46 AM

Don’t forget the very capable RNC chair Reince Priebus or awesome Tea Party Senator Ron Johnson. If it weren’t so cold up there and didn’t smell quite so much like cheese, I’d consider moving there.

My hope is to fix our spending problems, and our broken programs. Conservative means, in part, take a pragmatic approach, and respect state rights. I fail to see that block grants to states fixes anything. It just pushes the state problem to the states. Why should the states have the burden of fixing a federal program? I like what Representative Ryan is trying to accomplish, but block grants isn’t a solution. It just pushes the spending from the federal government’s financial statements to the state’s financial statements.

It’s because Paul Ryan is part of the establishment, and it’s the crony-establishment that, regardless of what they “say”, are the problem. They know that if one of them figurative hangs, they all will.
FloatingRock
on May 8, 2012 at 11:11 AM

I’m with you there. A two percent cut in the baseline escalation is still a crap sandwich that instead of coming due on my kids, will come on my grandkids as projected. It still leaves the rationale on the tables which will rapidly crash us all whenever the progs and RINOs get back in control a few cycles hence. Not that we already have RINOs in control now with Ryan as the conservative RINO. Heck, Clinton’s budgets were more conservative than what Ryan is proposing. And all these DC spenders are convinced that escalating debt is the new normal. Unacceptable.

At a broader level, Ryan really makes a great point here. Conservatives should refuse to cede the compassion argument to the left.

Aghrr…

What’s the point of this Republican socialism? Socialism better managed?

Paul Ryan is literally fighting to save and optimize the New Deal. FDR would love him.

Do you all realize that you have been tricked into being the Bad Cop for the New Deal? Dems get to play Good Cop of course. And you’re reduced to fighting to save it.

STOP playing along. STOP IT. Either we fight to repudiate the New Deal, or just join the democratic party and help them do it. There is no point in having a republican party if all it does is save socialism from crashing on the heads of all the socialists.